Active
by jaa162
Summary: Cobb and his team are sent to perform an inception on a girl whose identity is not truly her own. maybe t, for later referece. ArthurxOC -POSTPONED UNTIL FUTHER NOTICE-
1. The assignment

**Author's note: I loved Inception, (and JGL who plays Arthur) so I have been planning on writing an inception fic for a while. Then, I saw an episode of Dollhouse and thought it would be a cool idea to mesh the two worlds together for my second fanfic. Enjoy! The italics are flashbacks/memories or thoughts BTW.**

**(As much as I loved Ariadne, I just couldn't put her and Arthur as a couple for this fic. So this is an ArthurxOC fic.) I do not own Inception or Dollhouse.**

Chapter 1-the assignment

_Arthur approached the battered young girl with curiosity and concern as she argued with the waitress. The girl looked to be about 17 or 16, and she had shoulder length brown hair that complemented her tan skin and beautiful brown eyes. Her eyebrows furrowed with worry and anger as the waitress retreated to find the assistant manager. Arthur usually never stayed out too late but he wanted to get a good cup of coffee before he returned to his apartment, and this was the closest place he could find. Even though Arthur was sensible and quite reserved, something in him made him approach her, and even want to help her. Maybe it was the fact that she was covered in blood and cuts. Maybe it was the fact that she seemed lost and afraid. Or maybe it was the fact that she would change his life forever._

Arthur groaned as he reached for his ringing cell phone on the nightstand. It was about midnight in his L.A. loft, and he had just climbed into bed.

Dom's name appeared on the screen. "Dom, what is it? Do you know what time it is? Are you and the kids okay?" Arthur asked sleepily, but concerned. Ever since Arthur and the others completed the inception last year, they barely kept in touch, only checking in on each other every once in a while.

"Yes, we're fine. I'm calling because someone just offered us a job," Cobb started in.

Arthur was alert now. "Wait, what do you mean? I thought we were done with that, _for good."_

"I never promised that I would stop permanently. Just to be reunited with my family. But now I miss it, and I know you do too. Plus, they offered to pay us _triple _the amount that Saito paid. I want to do this, I _need_ to this, for the future of my kids. Besides, they wouldn't take no for an answer." Cobb said.

Arthur thought for a moment. He _did _miss it quite terribly; there wasn't anything quite like it. Arthur had been keeping a low profile since the inception, and tried to do other things, like take college classes at the local university, learn to play the violin, and even write a novel, but none of it fit his niche.

"Fine, I'm in. I just hope that you know what you're getting us into."

Cobb sighed. "I know it's risky, but it's worth it. I've already contacted Eames, Yusuf, and Ariadne. They will be arriving in the next couple of days. I'll give you more information then. Good-bye, Arthur."

"_Why are you helping me?" the frightened girl asked suspiciously._

_Arthur formed a small smile. "Well, judging by the fact that you're covered in blood and glass, I would say that you need someone to help you. What happened to you?"_

"_My car slid off the road, and I ran into a bush. Luckily, it wasn't a tree or I might not be getting my chicken and waffles just now."_

_Arthur stifled a laugh and cleared his throat. "Well, I'm happy to be of assistance, but I think you need to call your parents. I know they must be worried about you."_

_The girl huffed and rolled her eyes. "No. I am _not_ calling them."_

"_Well, I think you should."_

"_Well, that's not you decision to make. I will be better off without them in my life. Oh, I never thanked you…uh…"_

"_Arthur."_

"_My name is Ka…Linea. My name is Linea." _

The rest of the team arrived over the next week and Cobb told Arthur to meet them at an old warehouse near the port.

Arthur arrived right on time, and noticed that Cobb was talking to a woman and a man. The woman excluded elegance and professionalism just by being in her presence, with her white blouse and gray pencil skirt, and hair pulled back into a bun; while the man seemed slightly more aggressive and arrogant, with his plain suit and tie. Arthur wore nothing but suits, they were his comfort blanket so to speak, but he never produced an attitude as the strange man's.

Arthur sat on the other side of Yusuf so he could be as far away from Eames as possible, since Eames was seated beside Ariadne, who had planted herself between Yusuf and Eames.

She waved at him as he took his seat and he smiled at her. Arthur had a little crush on her last year, but now he thought of her as a sister-like figure. It helped him keep her at an arm's length.

Cobb finished his conversation with the two strangers and took his seat. The woman cleared her throat.

"Thank you all for coming, especially on such short notice. But we had a slight… complication, a few days ago, and we think you're the only ones who can help us. You see, we run a top-secret organization, much like your own, and it is vital that we get what we want to avoid a media frenzy. Here's a file that will make everything more clear," the woman stated in a thick British accent.

The man took some folders out of his briefcase and handed them out. When Arthur opened saw the picture inside, he gasped. _It can't be! Not after all this time! Please no! _Arthur screamed inside his head.

Cobb asked, "So what exactly are we looking at here?"

The man answered, "Well, it's your target. We need you to convince her that she must return to us. Willingly. Your former employer, Mr. Saito, informed us that you are very good at what you do, and we thought it would be interesting to try it on our girl. It might be a little tricky, but we're sure you can handle it."

"Excuse me, sir, but is she like an employee of yours or something?" Ariadne asked quietly.

"Something like that. She is very important to us, and we would like it that everything goes according to plan. If we don't get what we want, there will be _serious_ consequences. Just read the file. Everything you need to know is in there. We will be checking in on you on your progress, and bring her to you to perform the inception. Agreed?"

Cobb nodded, and led the woman and the man out of the warehouse, along with their bodyguard, who had remained as stiff and silent as a statue the entire time.

Everyone went to their stations and started brainstorming ideas on how they were going to go about the inception. Since Arthur was the point man, it was his job to find as much as he could on their target. Arthur glanced through the file and tried to find something that would stand out, but nothing. The only thing that picked at him was the fact that it was _her_._ The Girl. Linea_.

He couldn't help but notice that the farther he tried to get away from her, the more she kept creeping back into his life, through his job, and his mind. All he could dream about was the night he met her in that diner 3 years ago. So he helped her by buying her dinner, and letting her sleep on the couch in his apartment so she wouldn't have to sleep on the mean streets of L.A. That doesn't mean that he cared or still cared about her. But as the day got closer for them to perform the inception, in the back of his mind he wondered, _did he?_

_**Author's note-so that's chapter 1, I planned to post chp 1&2 but it's almost 2 am and im super tired. The next chapter will be focus on Linea so im looking forward to writing her. I was trying to keep in character and I really hoped I did. Arthur is so mysterious but nerdy and sweet, so I think he's one of the hardest characters to write because he has so many layers of him that we didn't get to tap into in the movie. I cant wait for chp 2! Please review!**_


	2. Linea

Chp 2-Linea

"_What's the room number again?" Linea asked as she followed her handler, Pavil, through a long hallway in the hotel. He stopped suddenly and handed her the room key with slight hesitation._

"_1324. Oh, you'll need this." Pavil handed her a small gun._

_Linea took it uncertainly. "Okay, um, WHY?"_

"_Because you never know when a guy might get too…aggressive. I just want you to be safe and come back in one piece. Remember, you're not his property, you're just there to do a job." Pavil stated. He stared at the young girl with an unreadable expression, but Linea could've sworn that she saw concern and fear in his hard green eyes. Pavil sighed, and ran his long fingers through his jet black hair. This simple gesture reminded Linea of someone that she knew a long time ago, only she couldn't put a face or a name to it. _

_Linea nodded, placed the gun under her dress,and began her search for room number 1324. It was her first day on the job, and she desperately needed the money. Pavil found her on the streets and brought her to Hemlock, who only told her if she wanted a meal, she would have to "earn" it. She never fully understood what he meant, until Pavil bought her the shortest and most revealing dress he could find, along with matching pumps. Linea became disgusted with herself when she finally realized what her "job" was._

_Linea shook the memory out of her mind and found the room she was looking for. The man they matched her with was supposedly a important business man of some kind. Linea entered the room as quietly as possible and noticed the man with wire-rimmed glasses and a crooked nose seated at a desk in the far corner of the room. He glanced at her only for a brief moment, and resumed speaking into his cell phone. Linea sat on the far corner of the bed and sighed. She never wanted this, but she couldn't return to the streets, not when she had a roof over her head and a full stomach. _

_Suddenly, a woman bursted into the room and gasped when she spotted Linea on the bed. Linea stood up abruptly, and tried to think of an explanation for her presence. She wasn't a homewrecker for she grew up in a broken family, and was not going to be responsible for ruining another one. _

_Just as Linea opened her mouth to explain, the woman exclaimed, "IT'S YOU! YOU'RE ALIVE! AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, YOU'RE ALIVE! I KNEW I WOULD FIND YOU!" _

_Linea closed her mouth and stared at the strange woman in shock. "What are you talking about? Who are you? Why did you need to find me? What's going on?"_

_The woman wiped the tears from her lovely face and replied, "Wait, you don't recognize me? It's me! Your mother. I haven't had a decent night's sleep since you left us almost 3 years ago. But now I've found you! Thank you, thank you so much!" The woman was acknowledging the man, who had hung up his phone and stood between Linea and the woman._

"_No, my mother died 10 years ago in a fire. Is this some sort of iniciation or something? Am I being punk'd?" Linea searched the room for any hidden cameras, but found nothing. _

_The woman blinked at her and said, "Well, I can assure you I'm not dead. What's going on Detective Brewster? How come she doesn't remember me? I'm her mother!"_

_Detective Brewster shrugged. "It must be Dollhouse. My source just informed me about it. Apparently, it's a top-secret organization that utilizes programmable human beings. They erase their original memories and personality from the mind to start at a blank state, and imprint a personality into it. That's what happened to her. She thinks she's a call girl that escaped from a hard family life. That's the personality they imprinted into her. She doesn't remember you because she can't."_

_The woman collapsed and Brewster caught her before she hit the ground. "Really? You don't remember me? Not at all?"the woman asked in a small voice._

_Linea shook her head and plopped down on the floor, trying to process this information. It didn't make any sense. She remembered her mother very well, but here was this woman claiming that Linea was her long-lost daughter, that ran away from home 3 years ago…_

"Hey! Hey, that's mine! Get up, you're hurting it!" a voice yelled in frustration in the distance. Linea opened her eyes and realized that she was laying on a worn tennis shoe. She rubbed her eyes and glared at the raggedy man and his dirty beard.

"I said get up! I need to feed him!" the man lightly kicked her in the leg to get her moving.

Linea shifted her weight so that she could try to pull the shoe from under her, but when the grimy man tried to touch her, she pulled out the gun that was still wedged between her thighs.

"Are you sure you want the stupid shoe? Because it seems like you're after something else to me!" Linea growled. The man started shaking his head and backing away from her, with his hands placed in front of him defensively.

_What am I doing? I don't shoot people? What's wrong with me?_ Linea thought to herself. True, she didn't kill people, but her brain would not let her put the gun down. Maybe that was part of one of her conflicted personalities: a murderer. But deep down she knew that it wasn't in her nature to be a killer. But since she was still dressed as an escort, she wasn't about let this filthe take advantage of her, if he hadn't already.

"Aw, you're scared? Good! Because you should be! What did you think you could take advantage of the lonely little girl?" Linea said darkly.

The man shook his head. "No! I just want Woody, okay?" Linea huffed and kicked the shoe towards him. He grabbed it swiftly and ran from the alley screaming, "She's crazy! She's crazy! That crazy lady just tried to kill me!" Of course, the people walking on the sidewalks just ignored him, like they do to all the homeless people.

Linea sighed, and lowered the gun. She thought about keeping it, she thought about trashing it. She walked towards the dumpster and threw it inside. She had been _thisclose_ to actually killing that man; she didn't want to go through it again.

She took a deep breath, and continued toward the sidewalk, only to be stopped momentarily by the voice from behind her.

"Hello, Linea. It's nice to see you again," a burly man, with jet black hair chimed as he stepped out of the shadows. Linea gasped, just before a muscular arm caught her around the shoulders and everything went black.

Arthur tried to do as much research as he could as the day neared for the inception, but apparently, Linea did not exist. Or at least he thought, until he stumbled upon a photo of a younger Linea, standing between an average-looking man and a beautiful woman, on the Rossum Corporation website. Underneath the photo, it stated, "Vice-President, Martin Browning, daughter Kayla, and his wife, Jessica."

Arthur became puzzled by the photo and Linea's file. The team were being employed by Rossum, but this photo showed that Linea's father also worked for Rossum.

_Why would he possibly want to perform an inception on his own daughter?_ He thought. Arthur hadn't realized that someone was reading over his shoulder until Ariadne asked, "Why does that photo say Kayla? The file said her name was Linea. That doesn't make sense."

Arthur jumped in his seat at the unexpected sound of her voice in his ear. "Yeah, um, I agree. That's what I'm trying to find out. How's your layout going?"

"Oh, I'm just finishing up, actually. When you have time, I'd like to go over it with you. Eames and Yusuf have already gotten their plans; you're the last one."

Arthur nodded and Ariadne stared at him as if she knew something was up. She couldn't pintail exactly what it was, but it was something. On the last job, he never spent this much time researching a subject. Now the inception was a day away, and he hadn't spilled one detail. She could tell he was lost, but she knew better than to ask him to let her help.

When she headed back to her station and continued finishing her work, Arthur decided to search for Kayla Browning.

Several articles came up through the search engine and he clicked on the first one. A missing persons ad popped up on the screen with Linea's picture, date of birth, and parents' phone number. Arthur found that the ad was posted about 3 years ago, after her parents filed a report indicating that she was a runaway at 17.

Later, as Ariadne headed out of the warehouse, she noticed Arthur in the back room, tied up to the dream machine. He seemed to be knocked out cold, and Ariadne wondered what he was dreaming about. She didn't want a repeat of what happened with Cobb last year, but Arthur wasn't Cobb. _Curiosity killed the cat,_ she thought, but she couldn't help herself.

Ariadne noticed that she was standing outside of a diner and that she could see Arthur sipping coffee at the bar inside. She took a step forward, but held back when she saw a young girl, dried blood covering her beautiful face, hastily enter the diner. Ariadne followed her inside and the girl sat at one of the booths in the back. The girl had glass in her hair, and her clothes were stained in dirt and blood. A waitress approached the girl and handed her a menu and a damp towel. The girl took them from her and wiped her face. Then, the girl realized that she didn't have enough money to pay for her food, and started an argument with the waitress.

Arthur came up beside Ariadne and asked calmly, "What are you doing here?"

"I was curious. Who is that?" Ariadne became engrossed in the argument between the girl and the waitress. Now that Ariadne could clearly see the girl's face, she looked oddly familiar.

"She's just someone I knew. She's not important." Arthur grabbed Ariadne's arm and led her out of the diner.

"Wait, she looks just like Linea! Arthur, what's going on?" Ariadne pleaded. Arthur avoided her gaze and just stared at his shoes guiltily.

"Well, I'll get us out of here first, and then I'll explain everything."


End file.
